Seattle Times calls Mike!™’s bullshit

The Seattle Times’ latest editorial is neatly summed up in its headline: “Pull the ad, Mike“:

Mike McGavick’s latest radio ad is a politician’s version of highway robbery.

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate is appropriating the issue of sales tax deductibility as his own and using it to attack incumbent Maria Cantwell. Problem is, Democrat Cantwell might as well be known as Sen. Sales Tax Deductibility. Both she and Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, have been leaders, in their respective houses of Congress, on the issue of first restoring, then keeping, the right of residents in Washington and seven other states to deduct their state sales tax from the federal tax bill.

[…]

McGavick’s radio ad attacks Cantwell for voting against the sales tax deduction

Point 1: Maria’s money was earned as stock options well BEFORE she decided to be a candidate for the Senate, and Real Networks granted her no extras once she resigned. And by the way, she has she kept her pledge not to accept PAC money to repay her 2000 campaign debt. Mike! was granted a huge bundle of cash and his options were accelerated AFTER he resigned from Safeco to run for the Senate. He’s got “smelly money,” all right, but she doesn’t.

point 2: The FEC ruling was that Mike!s use of his new wealth in the primary would not trigger the so-called “millionaires’ amendment,” but that ANY of that money left over used in the general elecion would count towards that trigger. And if Mike! decides to use any MORE of his ill-gotten gains in that fashion Maria will benefit.

I had so much fun with it yesterday, let’s post it again until McGavick responds: ************************* I’ve got a simple test for Mike McGavick.

Have him call Sen. Frist (House Republican Majority Leader), and tell him that it is vitally important to the Washington taxpayers, and to Mike McGavick personally, that the House adopts the Senate bill previously authored by Cantwell which will make the state sales tax deduction permanant. If he is such an effective problem-solver, surely he could convince HIS OWN PARTY to do this, in that it would benefit Sen. Frist’s home state of Tennessee, also.

After all, he convinced Safeco directors to pay him 28 million for only two months of part-time work! This should be a walk in the park for McGavick, who must be an incredible negotiator. Of course, if McGavick doesn’t at least make the call and support the bill, then it proves that he really doesn’t care about the Washington taxpayer, and just wants to try to create a misleading campaign issue.

Let’s see which McGavick shows up – Mike! the partison hack, or the “moderate conservative” who cares for Washington taxpayers.

Bad news overshadows good for middle class By Joel Havemann and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — The Census Bureau’s annual snapshot of economic health in the United States offered a warning light for the middle class, as an unchanged poverty level and a widening erosion of health-insurance coverage tarnished news that household income was beginning to rise.

Household income rose between 2004 and 2005 for the first time since 1999, the Census Bureau said in its report, released Tuesday.

But that news contained a mixed message. Earnings of full-time workers fell during that period, and incomes rose partly because there were more households in which a second adult joined the work force….

I hope the Democrats make a HUGE issue of this, with counter-ads, etc. Don’t count on the voters figuring it out on their own. This COMPLETELY exposes his “civility/I’m-going-to-do-things-differently” theme, which so far he has based his entire campaign on, as nothing more than a cynical political strategy. (Which I already guessed, but just in case others in the state were buying it.)

Maybe he’s just saving this ad as material for another “confessional” should he run for another office.

“I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” – Will Rogers

PROUDtobeanASS (sorry, couldn’t resist) directed us all to read a post about Ms. Cantwell “Failing the ethics test” about her use of her own money back in 2000, and asking why Mike!™ shouldn’t be able to use the “bonus” he received in this election.

On little item buried in that story is an important truth:

“The millionaires’ amendment, adopted in 2002, did not apply to the 2000 election”

It goes on to a lot of excuses and rationalization about why this insignificant difference shouldn’t matter.

The law changed. It was perfectly legal and ethical for her to use her own money any way she wanted to in the 2000 race.

Many people, including lots of Democrats, thought that the idea that a rich candidate should have that big an advantage was not in the public interest.

Because of that, we got a law passed that if a candidate had an essentially unlimited source of personal funds, that candidate’s opponent would be allowed a higher maximum individual donation limit, allowing donors to help make up the difference.

Ms. Cantwell is now expecting people to follow the law. Mr. McGavick’s statement that he is using that money to assist him in the primary is a transparent ruse. He isn’t campaigning against his Republican opponent (whoever that is), he’s campaigning against Ms. Cantwell.

Oh, and by the way, thanks to our “buddies” over at SP for the help in answering the question (gotta give credit where it’s due):

“I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” – Will Rogers

Much has been said about Mike!™’s DUI. Folks (usually Democrats) either condemning him for ever doing it, even 13 years ago, and folks (usually Republicans) saying that it isn’t a big deal.

Now a DUI is a big deal, but should not automatically disqualify someone for office. People make mistakes, even terrible ones like a DUI, and learn from them, never to make that same kind of mistake again. I hope that’s the case with Mr. McGavick (although I’m still not voting for him).

Still, I seem to have read at least a few reports that he still drinks, even to what many people would consider to excess on occasion. If someone wants to drink, even to the point of being a passed-out drunk and takes the effort to ensure that nobody else will be hurt by it, then it’s his business. That isn’t the case here. Mr. McGavick has risked other peoples lives on at least one occasion.

While folks are welcome to disagree, I would say that a DUI is a serious indication of an alcohol problem. Was Mr. McGavick ever professionally evaluated for alcoholism? If so, what were the results? If he’s running for Senator, we have a right to this information. It speaks to his character.

If he’s just gotten more careful about not getting caught, that really doesn’t answer the question.

Before the chorus of “what about the Kennedys” comes out, I should point out that I have never voted for a Kennedy, and while JFK is often considered a liberal icon, very few around here were old enough to vote for or against him. (I was in grade school when he died.)

I like Lincoln, too, and think he was a pretty good President. That doesn’t change my opinion of the current Republican leadership.

Mr. McGavick needs to come completely clean. He (rightly) admitted what he did, now he needs to tell us how he dealt with it.

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